1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing system providing a storage system and a control method of an information processing system providing a storage system, and in particular relates to a technique for extending the uptime of a disk device (hereafter abbreviated to “HDD”) and for reducing power consumption of the storage system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, the need for long-term storage of data of business information systems is increasing. The background for this is that, in fields such as banking, medicine, and pharmaceuticals, long-term storage of transaction data or medical data is being required by law.
A conventional long-term data storage media is a tape. However, a tape is easily affected by humidity or dust, and thus the management thereof is difficult compared to an HDD or the like. Further, converting the data stored on the tape to be usable by software requires a longer time than does an HDD.
Recently in particular, HDDs are often used as a storage media for long-term data storage, due to the lower cost per bit of HDDs. In such cases, longevity of the HDD and reduced power consumption of the storage system become the main issues.
In the technique described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-293314, in an effort to reduce power consumption of the storage system, power to the HDD is stopped or switched to power-saving mode after a predetermined amount of time has passed after access is removed from the host computer.
Next, there is technology for copying data stored in a storage region of a storage system (source storage region) to a storage region (destination storage region) which differs from the source storage region. This is technology for duplicating the data written in the source storage region into the source storage region and the destination storage region (hereafter referred to as “remote copying”).
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-85408 discloses a technique wherein the data written in the source storage region is written asynchronously in the destination storage region.
The probability of using remote copying and the like for data copying to a storage system for long-term data storage is high. However, in the technique described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-293314 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-85408, no technique is disclosed for power control during execution of remote copying.